A pastor was
preaching in church one Sunday on how one could bring about a positive
change in one’s life. As in the usual call-response strategy of
audience involvement, he said: “Everybody, say: ‘Change of attitude’.”
Everyone echoed, “Change of attitude.” Continuing, he said: “Change of
focus” and everyone religiously echoed that too. Then he said: “Change
of conduct.” There was a young man who, because he was not
concentrating, responded “Change of condom” while others said, “Change
of conduct.” A slip of tongue? The English language could be a trap in
the resemblances one finds between some words, especially those
referred to as homophones — which sound alike but mean different
things. English words like “conduct” and “condom,” in having some
segmental sounds in common, could also be a source of temptation as
well as a “WikiLeak” for a young man who probably has a lot on his
mind. Anyway, whatever might have been the abundance of his heart, we
still blame the English language for betraying him.

My students have
perfected their skills in outsmarting me whenever I attempt to use them
in demonstrating the consequences of inattentiveness in class. Not
wanting to be subjected to ridicule, they would, in response to my
question “What did I say last?” tell me: “You asked, ‘What did I say
last?’” Some of them, especially the back-benchers, would be busy
discussing some other issues, or playing with their mobile phones,
while a lecture is going on. When I discover this and try to expose
them, they choose to become tricksters. Does it matter if I tell them:
“Try to be here when you are here”? Sometimes the classroom interaction
as an event located in a world of distractions turns out to be a
hide-and-seek, but we enjoy it and use the humour to bring back
wandering hearts. Not that such interruption is desired in a lecture
that is strictly tied to time, but what can one do but use the exposed
weakness of inattention to try to rebuild the lecture as a collective
engagement with knowledge?

We live in a world
where the mind is under serious siege, with many people creating more
and more distractions for themselves and others, and becoming
increasingly absent-minded in their performance of daily activities. A
tsunami of the mind surges forth and sweeps them away from a
coordinated life. Just think about the number of patients who, in some
societies, have perished in the hands of some doctors and nurses
because of wrong medication. Imagine some surgical materials — pins,
threads, even scissors — forgotten inside a patient’s body in a
surgical operation and the patient later opened up again after
suffering terribly for weeks or even months with the strange luggage!
And what does the sticker on the door of the doctor’s consulting room
say? Perhaps this: “We Cure; God Heals.” Wonderful!

OK, imagine drivers
— including riders of commercial motorcycles — typing messages on their
mobile phones or searching for phone numbers to dial while driving on
busy roads. Look closely on the windshields of the vehicles and you
would find a sticker that reads: “Angels on Guard” or “Back to Sender;
I’m Covered by the Blood of Jesus.” The blood of Jesus must be juju
that wards off road accidents, even when the driver’s actions invite
such accidents. Indeed, many vehicles on our roads drive themselves, or
are driven by supernatural forces, and passengers only get to their
destinations by a stroke of luck.

Sometime ago I bought some ‘special’ loaves of bread from a
five-star hotel, hoping to make my family’s breakfast table a bit
different. Indeed it turned out to be tragically different for, as we
were eating the bread, we found staple pins inside it. In fact, it was
my tongue and teeth that first made the shocking discovery! I wasn’t
quite sure that my children hadn’t swallowed some in their hurry to get
done with the breakfast and be off to school. When I phoned the hotel
and complained in the bitterest terms, what else did I get but
apologies and excuses on how a packet of staple pins fell inside the
flour and the baker thought they were all eventually removed! The
noises in our heads which are sometimes installed by the kind of
culture in which we find ourselves or by our own inability to make the
right choices, inevitably prevent us from concentrating and doing
things appropriately. A serious tsunami of the mind is silently
devastating some societies and does require the same kind of urgent
attention that we give the physical tsunamis in the world today.

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